I gave a look at the game, and I have to admit the situation does not look good. I don't see much to do in a 10 turns set.
I understand your concerns about G setting a foothold in the north, but now our troops are spread too thinly, and it is hard to defend north and attack south at the same time. Our hammer output is too low, troops take way too long to build. :/
It seems we are changing our minds pretty fast in this game. Looking back at posts 251, 254 adn 255 (page 13) and then 265 and 269 it would appear that there was a consensus for at least one city in the north. Now we have it, but wish we didn't?
Or maybe not everyone weighed in on that?
I think we are faced with defending north with or without Ferrous (G has his eye on Cibola).
I suppose one option is to leave one defender in Ferrous (or none), and not worry if we lose it. That would solve the troops spread too thin issue.
But if we aren't defending Ferrous, then we are then probably defending Nidaros, so the troops are still not in Mongolia.
Ferrous may be our best hammer location eventually. So keeping it may be the answer to our hammer shortage. My thought is that eventually, Ferrous helps defend the North, and other cities produce troops for the south. It has lots of forest to chop!
So I guess one key question is "Ferrous: use it or lose it?"
I'd like to hear some input from R1 and the other teammates before moving on. g_s suggests HE in Nidaros, that might make sense, although it will delay the start of troop production for some time there.
As we eventually fall back from G, Nidaros may go before Florence. And eventually, more hammers in Florence? Why not HE there? There are three forests that chop into Florence, I think. I can live with it in Nidaros though.
I don't see the advantage of settling another city right now, we don't have sufficient workers to develop it neither enough troops to defend it. What should we do with the settler? Also, if we manage to capture cities, I tend to keep them. We will want to eliminate K, so the motherland whining won't happen in the future. But then again, this is beginning to sound like just wishful thinking.
The settler was part of the settle 1 in the north idea, became superfluous when we captured one there. Only use in near term is resettling Old Sarai to get gold and food both. But maybe we'd rather keep Old Sarai, as you say.
With forests to chop in Ferrous and Florence, maybe one more pair of workers is a good idea (if we follow the patience plan below).
Tech: CS is 20something turns away, I tend to continue on it as we lack other good options. p.s. just for the record I wouldn't have lightbulbed currency - too cheap and rather useless at this point. In those ocasions I tend to save the GP for later use.
Well, R1 had mentioned that in 263, but maybe after preisthood to open up CoL, didn't need it. I did not see another use for GM in near term (were we thinking of using 2 on a GAge?), figured the extra trade routes would be a help.
Research will be better after we road the gold and get rid of red faces in Nidaros and Cibola.
Here is a thought ... let's be just a bit patient ... research CS, run bureacracy. Get GS in Cibola to bulb machinery. With the iron in Ferrous, now we can go after Khan with berserkers. Build our cat army while we wait. Put a forge in Ferrous and Florence when we can whip or chop them. Mine hills in Ferrous, and now we have hammers. Hold off on Khan while we build some power.
Or go for Khan with less power ... depends a lot on how offensive G is in the next say 20 turns.
In either case, the next 10 or so turns may run the same ... and if we are mostly in a buildup mode, why just 10 at a time? We need to move this along a bit faster, so maybe more per set for a while? I think the last two have run 15 anyway (last one shouldn't have

)
As potentially bleak as this might look, are we that far away from where other teams are? In power and score? I don't think so ... so let's not despair too soon!

I follow CRC, Peanut, Xteam, Murky Waters, and One Short Straw on the charts. Scorewise, we are near Xteam and Peanut. Powerwise we are right with CRC and One Short Straw. CRC and Xteam have gone on to do well. Maybe that means G is not so much of a pest as we fear right now.
So, if we can get both CS (res) and Mach (bulb) in 20 turns, lets make two more workers, build cats (after finishing current foot), build HE, bring OZ and Ferrous online and mine Florence, then a berserker/cat assault on Kahn in about 25 to 30 turns? HE in Florence is nice as it is closer to the front.
dV